Not applicable.
Not applicable.
The present invention relates to the development of merchandise line lists and data foundation establishment for merchandising related applications for use across a variety of sales and distribution channels, such as retail, wholesale, Internet and mail order.
Recently, the dividing lines in the retail, wholesale, Internet and mail order markets have begun to overlap as retailers, manufactures and wholesalers have expanded their businesses into all facets of the marketplace. This expansion by businesses has been in response to increasing competition and a corresponding increase in the amount of more sophisticated consumers. As consumers have become more demanding, the importance of maintaining a current and ever growing and evolving supply of inventory has increased. Consequently the development of flexible merchandising systems to help track, plan and manage product lines is essential.
However, prior art merchandising systems typically are limited to single and specific sales and distribution channels. For example, a wholesaler will have systems designed to work specifically with issues like shipping, warehousing, and advertising allowance which a retailer will have systems designed for store specific issues such as allocation and distribution and details. Current consumer tastes and demands have forced businesses to diversify not only their product offerings, but also the sales distribution channels through which they take their product to market, channels such as retail, wholesale, Internet and mail order. Accordingly, these conventional applications are not well suited to the tracking, planning and managing of inventory over multiple sales and distribution channels.
Furthermore, conventional systems also suffer from the inability to spontaneously change product classifications without losing the prior sales history of the products. Furthermore, these systems are also limited as to the number of product extensions which can be used in the system (i.e., wool sweaters (regular, big and tall, petite sizes)).
Accordingly, it would be desirable to have a merchandising system which could develop merchandise line lists and establish a data foundation for merchandising related applications across a variety of sales and distribution channels.
The invention includes a method, apparatus and system for the development of merchandise line lists, the gathering of data, and the storage of data in such a way that a foundation is established for merchandising related applications for use across a variety of sales and distribution channels, such as retail, wholesale, Internet and mail order. The invention includes a computer implemented method for use with a merchandising system which includes the steps of gathering product information for products, creating hierarchies for the products, assigning distribution channels through which the products will be sold, establishing different time horizons for the sale of the products and linking the product editing means, classification editing means, distribution channel editing means, and horizon editing means together to produce merchandise line lists.
The invention further includes an apparatus, system and computer readable medium for creating product line lists which may include a database having stored therein product data for a plurality of products, a merchandising system coupled to said database which includes a product editor for providing product information for products, a classification editor to create hierarchies for the products, a distribution channel editor means to assign distribution channels through which the products will be sold, a horizon editor to establish different time horizons for the sale of the products and a line editor means to build product line lists.
The method, apparatus and system will work across a variety of different distribution channels such as retail, wholesale, mail-order and the Internet in any number of horizons such as fiscal seasons, calendar seasons, design seasons and media seasons.